Thursday, August 22, 2013

Hong Kong for the weekend!

Firstly, thank you to all who commented on my previous post, they were really wise words of advice. I have really been thinking how to somehow stand on my own two feet without cutting off my parents. Honestly, they would never allow that to happen. That's the thing about Asian values, family means absolutely everything, and they will always always have my back. So I just need to remember that they are a worst-case scenario safety net, to somehow trick myself into believing that I have to be independent without really being so. I do think this is something good though, to always have the kids being filial and thoughtful of their parents, but there needs to be a balance, like the analogy of the butterfly in the hand being protected but you can't like squeeze it too hard or it'll crush and die, or some shit like that.

I also had a good talk with N and he calmed me down a lot this morning. Honestly, I was crying in my bed because my dad sent me such a nice email and I just felt so undeserving of all the niceness of the support system I have. N reassured me that I do deserve this niceness, that I need to believe in myself. I don't know if I really do. I sent back a heartfelt email to my dad, and he said it made his day. I told him I just need more time than required for other people to arrive at the same conclusions, because things like fighting for survival or fighting for passion/dreams does not come naturally to me. And there is very little that can be done about this because of my socioeconomic upbringing, unless we somehow reverse the times and made things different. I assured him inherently I want to succeed, I just need more time to figure things out. I told him it was just like my coming out experience, where there were some lows where my family thought they might have lost me forever because I "changed so much" but I emerged (lol emerged is such a gay word) out of everything being a lot more confident and comfortable than I have ever been with my gay identity.

I also had such a good long conversation with my mom who has gone back into the workforce at the age of 50+! She's a real estate agent/consultant now and she's actually doing a heck of a good job now, and was animatedly explaining to me everything about the property market in my country. For example, I had no clue that there are only 70,000 actual privately-owned houses in my country of 5.5 million people. The rest of the people stay in either condominiums or government-subsidized flats (these are a lot nicer than public housing in the states btw, prices of these flats range from 200k USD to 1 million USD and beyond) Supposing a household unit on average consists of 3.5 people, that's roughly less than 0.5% of the population. No wonder the average price of a house here is way more than a million, since the government refuses to allow more privately-owned homes to make way for more subsidized public housing.

Then I went to the gym, and at the gym I decided to fly to Hong Kong tomorrow. Completely spontaneous. Two reasons, one, to meet the lady from the headhunting firm that my dad's friend introduced to me (she does entry-level hiring too which is awesome), and two, because I'm getting lonely here. I know I've whined about this so much, but it's just very difficult for me to find good friends in this city. N isn't here, and I have had zero hookups since HGG (honestly, I would hook up with him in a heartbeat again, but he's gone for still another 2 weeks in Taiwan for his military exercise), (SAP has also contacted me about getting a room at the iconic hotel downtown because he wants to have sex with me, I told him I wouldn't mind doing that if we can have a menage a trois with this totally cute American guy that's his current squeeze - strange that he would still come and find me for sex though we only met twice! I also explicitly told him I am not having anal sex with him, and yes he thinks I'm a bottom and I was like uhmmmm fucker) and all my other friends (more than 10 college friends) are all in HK.

So yeah, tomorrow until Thursday! Ngoh ho jung yi heung gong! As usual I end my posts with some sort of self-reflection that I am playing too hard, Hong Kong till next week, Cebu the week after, then London for three weeks, then back here with N, and then possibly Hong Kong with N permanently after. I hope my meeting with the headhunting lady is going to make something click, or that she'll introduce something awesome to me.

1 comment:

Mid-Autumn festival in HK, get mooncakes. What is your favorite flavor? Being a gay guy I prefer "5 nuts" for obvious reasons. :-)

As for your family dynamics, staying close to family is fine and very expected in asian families. Being dependent tho is another thing. It would be good for you to be on your own for a period of time (say 6-12 months), just to get a taste of being independent. If it doesn't work, you can always go home and your parents will be happy to have you return.